The Police Officer, and Halloween

 For some months now you have determined that a tiny police officer (sometimes a baby police officer) lives in the small door to the under eave storage at the top of the stairs on the third floor. You like to open the door on our way downstairs and check on him. Sometimes he is still sleeping. Sometimes he is there, and awake, and we have a long conversation, and then you occasionally place him in the palm of my hand (he is very small). This morning you informed me that he wasn't there, because he was visiting his other family. I wondered aloud if he had one other family, or several? You said he had one. 

"Some families have sisters, and some families don't have sisters," you said as I carried you down the stairs.

"Do you have a sister?" I asked. Sometimes you call your babysitter in New York your sister, and lately you have taken to calling your baby sitter in Marblehead - formerly "my big kid with crocs" - your sister. 

"My sister is at my house far away," you said.

We have been sort of soft-playing the idea that we aren't going back to New York to you. Mainly I don't want you to worry about the toys that we couldn't fit in the car, since they will be coming here eventually. But there are toys and books we couldn't bring that you probably miss if I draw your attention to them. I think you like the apartment, and you like your room in the apartment, but I have floated the idea that soon we will turn the small guest room in Mustard House into your room. But one thing for certain - you sure don't miss that school. What a disaster. Last week you started back at Harborlight, and every dropoff was easier than the easiest dropoff we had in the city. Your teacher Miss Sue actually knows what she's doing and actually cares about you. Everyone at the school administration knows you, and said things like "welcome back, Charles!" We went to the family fall festival on Saturday, where you got to crunch in leaves and use a play bow and arrow and were leery of the bouncy house and adored the hay ride, and while I waited for you and your dad I ran into a great woman I knew from the yacht club baby pool and another woman I know from sailing and met a mother of a sweet older boy in your class. And you know what? Nobody was shut out of coming. No limited tickets. No freaking Instagram backdrop for posing. Just a mob of kids running around eating cotton candy and a bake sale run by actual parents and a tractor hay ride driven by an actual dad and a petting zoo with a tiny, soft baby goat. 

There are things I miss in New York. There are things I will regret. This is the first time that my interests have run in direct conflict with yours I think. But there was no question in my mind that as much as I adore my shelf at the NYPL and my long-dragging-on tenure in the Center for the Humanities, and as much as I love our weird apartment with its gorgeous views and its working fireplace, it is so much more important to me that you are happy. Tonight is Halloween, and we will trick or treat with some neighborhood friends, people you will grow up with, and now you will actually know all of them because you will be around. 

We will wear our matching rabbit costumes, and Daddy will be a carrot, and your uncle will come too, and nobody will be posing for pretend experiences. We will just be living a pretty charmed life.